Category: television

Bari Weiss interviews Lucy Aharish, the first Arab Muslim presenter on mainstream Israeli t.v.

February 13, 2024 • 12:30 pm

Lucy Aharish is the first Arab Muslim television presenter on mainstream Israeli t.v.  Here’s a video, highly touted on the Free Press site, in which Bari Weiss interviews Aharish for an hour: “This Muslim Israeli woman is the hope of the Middle East“.

I’m not sure what the title means by “hope of the Middle East,” unless it buttresses Aharish’s claim that Muslims who commit or even approve of terrorism are not “real Muslims”, and thus there is hope for peace and comity between Israelis and “real” Muslims in Palestine.

A bit about Aharish from Wikipedia:

As of 2018, Aharish serves as a news anchor for Reshet 13. She was previously a morning anchor on a current-affairs show for its predecessor Channel 2, a presenter of the Evening Edition for i24NEWS, a news presenter and reporter for Channel 10, a co-host for Radio 99, a late-night co-host for Channel 1, as well as a co-host for Kan 11.

The interview has its ups and downs, but I think it’s worth watching for two reasons. First, it shows how even Israeli Arabs are subject to racism (Aharish tells several stories, including her failure to get paid for a speaking engagement simply because of her religion and ethnicity).  But she also claims that Israel is not an “apartheid” state, citing those Israeli Arab Muslims who have risen to high places (both of her sisters have good jobs, and of course Israeli Arabs do occupy high places, including the Knesset and the Supreme Court). So apparently Aharish believes that although there’s residual racism in Israel, it doesn’t affect Israeli Muslims’ opportunities or life prospects. (I’m not quite sure how, if there’s racism, it can NOT play out in differential treatment!) But it’s certainly true that Israel is a ton less racist than Palestine or other Arab countries—places where Jews often can’t even live, much less rise to decent positions.

At many points Aharish is moved to tears, especially when saying things like, “Hamas murdered in the sense of compassion in me, the humanity in me.” She argues that after the October 7 attacks she had lost empathy for the Palestinians, but now is realizing that  “Israel cannot afford to lose its humanity” and emphasizes the need to make the next generation of inhabitants of Gaza and West Bank become neighbors to the extent that they could forge a peace with Israel.

As I said, I find the most dubious claim to be Aharish’s insistence that terrorists, as well as those Arab Muslims in Palestine and other Arab countries who sympathize with terrorists, are not genuine Muslims. She argues that this extremism “is not Islam.  This is not being a Muslim. This is being a monster.” But the polls taken in Palestine and other Arab countries show the contrary: a huge proportion of inhabitants, if not most of them, approved of the October 7 massacre and don’t want Israel to exist. And, of course, Sam Harris has argued that this form of extremism is really inherent in Islam. All you have to do is to read the Qur’an to see its emphasis on killing apostates, infidels and Jews. To be sure, the Bible is pretty genocidal, too, but the difference is that Christianity has now largely been stripped of its homicidal dicta while Islam has not.

It is, I think, a debatable matter of whether most Muslims fall into Aharish’s definition of “extremists.” Sometimes it sounds as if she’s making a virtue of necessity.

But, as I said, this is worth listening to. For a shorter take on her views, also showing her emotionality (a good thing, one rarely seen in an anchorperson), see this CNN video.

Here’s the intro to the interview at the Free Press.

And the video:

FIRE puts ads on television

July 13, 2023 • 9:00 am

Imagine my surprise when I was watching the NBC Evening News the last two nights and each program included a different ad for the Foundation of Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE). FIRE is perhaps the most visible and efficacious of all free speech groups—the ACLU has become hopeless—and I found these ads heartening, though it must have cost the organization a pile.

I found a way to embed them here, and I’ll put up four ads I found on the Internet. They’re only 30 seconds to one minute long, so watch them all. Go free speech!

This is one that I saw, which I think is very good. I have no idea whether it will touch the average American.

On comedy and free expression.  There are a few scenes of disgruntled audience members attacking comedians.

I particularly like this one, as it shows two guys (one is Colin Kaepernick) who have two opposing views but can get along, each expressing his feelings in public.  I particularly like the last words of the former Green Beret: “We have a right to speak out; that’s what we fought for.”

And a conservative:

 

Dawkins interviewed by Piers Morgan

March 31, 2023 • 11:30 am

I found out about this recent appearance by Richard Dawkins on Piers Morgan‘s show via the tweet below. Reader Luana, who sent me that tweet, says that many people online are now going after Richard, accusing him of cowardice by refusing to give his opinion on matters Islamic. I’ve put the entire interview below and you can judge for yourself.  Morgan, by the way, is a Tory, but not as conservative as a hardwired American right-winger. He’s also religious.

Below is the whole 47-minute video. Topics discussed including cancel culture, evolutionary biology, and how did something come from nothing (this plays into Morgan’s religious sentiments), Morgan asks Dawkins what happened before the Big Bang, which of course nobody knows. (Dawkins says, “it doesn’t help to postulate something complicated [God] at the outset.”)

Morgan claims that as a believer, he needs an alternative to a purely naturalistic origin of the universe, and sees that as a telling point against atheism. Dawkins’s response, “Science take a pride in admitting what they don’t know”—a good response given that Pier’s own “theory”—that Catholicism is the true faith—has no evidence at all in its favor. I think Richard should have asked Morgan, “What evidence do you have for the Catholic god you believe in?” or “How do you know that YOUR own ‘theory’ is right?”

After each man has stated his position on God and the afterlife, the conversation moves to the recent movement of the woke to purify language, especially in biology, including discussion of sex. Here Dawkins and Morgan agree (and so do I). Dawkins says, “There are two sexes—and that’s all there is to it.”

The discussion moves on to how “perceived scientific wisdom” can change, as in the covid pandemic. Morgan asks Dawkins to respond to those who use these shifts in position to denigrate science itself, and Dawkins again has a good response (I think Morgan agrees with him, though I’m not sure.) This brings up the “culture of nastiness” on social media, and then artificial intelligence (“can a machine be sentient?”)—seemingly the most important topic of today’s intellectual discussions.

The discussion of Islam begins at 30:28, when Morgan reminds Dawkins that he, Richard, said that fundamentalist Islam is “one of the great threats” to humanity.  Dawkins explains why he adheres to this, but rejects the idea that he’s an “Islamophobe”; he simply objects to the tenets of fundamentalist Islam like female genital mutilation and the denigration of music and dancing. As Dawkins says, correctly, “Muslims are the biggest victims of Islamism.”

Dawkins then refuses to give an opinion of whether a British “ISIS bride” should be allowed back to Britain, saying that he hasn’t studied the situation thoroughly enough. He doesn’t want to talk about the threats that he himself gets, which may have given rise to the tweet above, but I understand that Richard doesn’t like to discuss threats to public figures, including himself, because he thinks it just encourages nut cases and wannabees who might follow suit.

At 34 minutes in, Dawkins reveals who he thinks is the smartest person he’s ever met, but I’ll let you go to 34:15 to hear the answer.

Other questions include what does Dawkins hope to achieve now that he’s 82, does he have any great unfulfilled ambitions, and so on. He does mention the topic of the book he’s writing now, which is going to be, I think, scientifically controversial because of its claim that you can read off the ancestral environments of any species by reading its DNA. (I have issues with that idea, though I will read the book to see what it says before weighing in.)

At 36:30, Morgan asks him, “What is the one question you’d most like answered before you die?” You can hear the answer for yourself. (Dawkins actually mentions several questions.) During the show’s last bit, Morgan peppers Richard with personal questions like, “Are you a romantic?”, “Do you get a bad rap?”, “What is the one thing you’d like to be known for?” and so on.

It’s a good interview, and I have to say that I think the tweet above is misguided: there’s simply no indication that Dawkins evinces cowardice in his discussion of Islam or religion. In fact, it’s one of the better interviews with Dawkins I’ve heard. Morgan asks provocative questions, but he’s not out to “get” Richard, and the only agenda he seems to have is to hold onto his Catholicism.

How was the first bit of the U.S./Holocaust documentary?

September 19, 2022 • 7:15 am

Yesterday I noted that the new documentary directed by Ken Burns, Lynne Nozick, and Sarah Botstein, “The Holocaust and the U.S.” had its first airing on PBS last night (there will be three two-hour presentations).  There were a fair number of pre-show comments, some of them degenerating into an argument about the U.S.’s departure from Afghanistan, for crying out loud!

I missed the show because of my ridiculously early bedtime, mandated by the insomnia doc, and because someone with a sleep disorder is not supposed to watch the tube before bed. But I will watch it when they put it online on September 18. Meanwhile, I am sleeping better now, at the price of giving up wine with dinner. That will resume when I’m better.

In the meantime, how was the show? (The first episode is called “The Golden Door”, covering from the beginning to 1938.)

To comment below, you have to have watched the show! I just discovered that you (or perhaps only those in Chicago) can watch the first episode, “The Golden Door”, free by clicking on the screenshot below. B (After September 18, you can watch all the episodes free online, but only for a few days.)

The photo, from the beginning of the episode, shows the Frank family, with Anne on the left, Margot on the right, and their mother Edith in the middle. The photo was snapped by Otto Frank, the only one who survived the war.

Highlights from Bill Maher’s latest “Real Time” show

June 26, 2022 • 9:15 am

Watch quickly before HBO pulls these clips from Youtube!

Reader Paul called my attention to the second clip below from the latest Bill Maher’s “Real Time” show, but I found two other short clips on YouTube. His guests this week were three writers: Andrew Sullivan, Christine Emba, and Katie Herzog.

Maher is often damned by “progressive” bloggers as an “alt-Righter”, but they simply hate the fact that he makes fun of the progressive Left. (Yes, he did flirt with anti-vaxism, but that just gave him another reason to dislike him.) But if you look at the videos, especially the ending of the second one, you’ll see that he’s no conservative, but a liberal of the classical stripe. Do progressives lack a sense of humor? Are there any “progressive Leftist” comedians? (I can’t think of any.) The comedians who liberals really liked, like Dave Chapelle, Sarah Silverman, Lenny Bruce, and George Carlin, were known for taking the mickey out of liberal hypocrisy. Of course the Right is also fair game these days, as the clips below show.

And I often find Maher very funny. His delivery, a combination of deadpan and laughing at his own jokes, is unique. Even if you don’t like him, you have to admit that there’s nobody besides Chapelle, who has a very different style, who fills Maher’s niche.

Here’s his 2.5-minute opening monologue with a dig at the end at Democrats who couldn’t bear to vote for Hillary Clinton. (I did, though I voted for Bernie in the primary.)

This is a good 8.5-minute bit in which Maher points out how Americans resent it when they don’t have “their own lawyer”—someone who represents their interests. Some Democratic policies, like forgiving student loan debt, get it in the neck. (The fourth “lawyer billboard” is a hoot!) Finally, at 7:55, he gets serious about trying to dump Trump.

Six minutes of discussion about Roe v. Wade and the divisions within America. Katie Herzog mourns the fact that there’s “no center” in American politics, Sullivan makes a few remarks suggesting that the states and not the courts should decide the issue of abortion, which is what the Supreme Court just ruled.

And eight minutes of overtime. Herzog agrees with me that Biden overstepped his bounds by banning Jool e-cigarettes and trying to eliminate all nicotine from tobacco. As she says, “If anything turns me into a libertarian, it will be this particular issue.”  This bit isn’t as interesting as the videos above, but I add it for completion.

Don’t forget the January 6 hearings tonight

June 9, 2022 • 4:00 pm

At last some of the Congressional hearings on the January 6 insurrection will be televised—tonight starting at 8 p.m. Eastern Time. All the major networks will carry them.

For a quick guide to what you can expect, see this article in the NYT (click below):

An excerpt:

The New York Times will provide live video of the hearing at nytimes.com along with live discussion and analysis from Times reporters. All of the major broadcast networks plan to carry the hearing live, as do the major cable news networks, with the exception of Fox News.

What will the hearing cover?

Committee leaders have indicated that the focus on Thursday will be on presenting a complete timeline of the riot, beginning with the 2020 election and extending through the riot itself and its aftermath.

Democrats involved in the investigation have said the evidence they present will connect the dots between the monthslong campaign that President Donald J. Trump and his allies waged to discredit the outcome of the election and the effort by rioters on Jan. 6 to disrupt the congressional certification of the results.

The hearing is also likely to highlight the involvement of the Proud Boys, the far-right group whose members played a critical role in the storming of the Capitol. The committee said the witnesses at the session would include Nick Quested, a documentary filmmaker who was embedded with the group in the run-up to Jan. 6, and Caroline Edwards, a Capitol Police officer who was injured at the start of the violence.

There will be more hearings to come, with the next announced one on Monday at 10 a.m. They might be boring, but I expect moments of fireworks.

“Seinfeld” in the cancellation crosshairs

November 15, 2021 • 11:15 am

I’ve subscribed to The Righting, a daily news summary of right-wing articles compiled by leftists. Perhaps that explains why the daily list of links shows how bull-goose loony much of the Right is, even when the articles come from the more respectable right-wing sites, like the National Review.  The articles are hilarious in their denunciations of the Left (they are of course anti-vax and hate Biden), but even a blind pig can find an acorn—an acorn which you’d only find on conservative sites. One of these is their singling out of egregious wokeness.

This one, from of all places a right-wing entertainment site (Hollywood in Toto: “The Right Take on Entertainment”), describes the attacks on the television comedy “Seinfeld” for being racist, sexist, able-ist, and so on. The article links to a lot of criticism of the show.

Now I never watched “Seinfeld” much; for some reason the fact that nothing ever happened on the show bored me, but there were some episodes I found hilarious, like “The Chicken Roaster,” in which Kramer gets hooked on Kenny Rogers’ Roasters, a chicken takeout across the street from their apartment. But its flashing sign, which makes Kramer’s apartment into a nightmare of disco proportions drives him nuts. And the funniest episode I ever saw was the famous “Soup Nazi” one, based on a real soup-vending curmudgeon in New York City.

I never paid much attention to the show’s lack of “political correctness”, as it was called at the time, but now people are sniffing out infelicities in very old t.v. shows and calling them out. Back then, for instance, “Soup Nazi” was inoffensive; now it would be an insult to all brash people, or seen as a diminution of Nazism. That trend is what the article below is about (click on screenshot to read).

An excerpt:

It’s only one of the most popular sitcoms of all time, a comedy that sparks new fans whenever it shifts to a fresh platform. It did it again earlier this year when Netflix began airing the show’s nine sublime seasons.

And, for at least six years, the woke mob has insisted we shouldn’t laugh along with Jerry, George, Elaine and Kramer.

Take this 2015 article, which declares one of TV’s supreme sitcoms is now too “racist” and “sexist” to enjoy. The article sprang to life after Seinfeld admitted he’d never play a college gig because students are too easily offended.

If you stick a thumb in the woke mob’s eye they quickly retaliate.

Still, the article didn’t inspire a movement. Nor did subsequent pieces hammering similar themes. The far-Left Bustle attacked singular jokes from the classic show, 13 in total, as being offensive with its 2018 screed.

The trend continued in 2020, with Cheat Sheet bemoaning that Seinfeld refused to apologize for the show’s jokes. The woke mob loves apologies. They’re rarely accepted, of course.

The Hostage Apology is akin to Struggle Session lite.

The far-left Screen Rant decided, apparently, that 2021 is the year to kickstart “Seinfeld’s” cancelation. Back in May the site ran an op-ed taking down George for his problematic behavior.

His antics “haven’t aged well,” we’re told. Screen Rant wants every character in a sitcom to behave like a gentleman, thus negating all of George’s broad comic tics.

Looper attempted its own cancellation essay this year, all the while admitting how foolish such a measure is.

Sure, Jerry, Elaine, George, and Kramer — and on a meta level, Larry David, Jerry Seinfeld and everyone else behind the “Seinfeld” scenes — would undoubtedly laugh at the notion of an article like this, offering a snarky remark and a reminder that the best humor (and an invaluable life necessity) comes from laughing at things society takes seriously. Nevertheless, it’s hard to dispute — these “Seinfeld” moments have not aged well.

Screen Rant’s latest broadside against “Seinfeld?” Seinfeld: 10 Things About Jerry That Have Aged Poorly

You can read the articles (I’ll put three examples below from the Screen Rant article and three from another piece), but it was my impression that Seinfeld’s comedy was meant to be edgy by taking on topics and reactions that people often have, but keep to themselves. In other words, it airs publicly what people are thinking privately, but were allowed to air in the private group of Jerry’s friends. Three examples from Screen Rant.

Three examples from the Bustle article, “These 13 jokes from ‘Seinfeld’ are actually super offensive“:

Well, I didn’t think they’d find this episode “super-offensive”, but I was wrong.

I don’t find what’s below particularly racist, for some men are attracted to Asian women. Others are attracted to black women, or to Hispanic women. I’ve never heard this as characterized as “saying you like everyone in a race”. Rather, what some men find attractive are the features of women from some ethnic group, and not all women or all people.

This isn’t “racist” unless somehow you stereotype the women by expecting them to all behave in a defined and similar way.  But the relationships I know of involving white men and nonwhite women have all been pretty much like intra-racial relationships, with the same affection and closeness. The women are, after all, human beings.

Many of the ten jokes and incidents from the Bustle article, as I said, deal with people’s feelings that they’re not comfortable making public except to one’s very good friends. In other words, they highlight life as it is, warts and all. No character on Seinfeld is portrayed as a saint: they all have their flaws, obsessions, and biases.

This kind of humor was the metier of people like Lenny Bruce, and now of Dave Chappelle, but it doesn’t play well with the Woke. As we know from Titania McGrath—whose sarcastic tweets get mistaken for genuinely “progressive’ views”—one characteristic of Wokeness is that it lacks a sense of humor.

Seinfeld and other comedians have said that they’ll no longer do standup at colleges and universities, and it’s not hard to see why. Here’s Seinfeld on “political correctness”.